It's not only athletes that do this - politicians do it all the time. BobDole?, for example, was parodied by comedians for his extensive use. The benefit of doing it is that it constantly repeats the name that the speaker wants the audience to remember. It also makes promises sound like statements of fact.

In addition to using ThirdPerson as a substitute for FirstPerson, it can be used as a substitute for SecondPerson? to show deferrence. For example, "Would His Majesty [third person] care to dine now?"

Can somebody point me to a Wiki page here, where there was a style recommendation, that authors should use ThirdPerson speech to refer to their own contributions. Consequently authors in the MeatballWiki refer to their recent changes in their ShortDigest? by their name

ThirdPerson is used commonly in literature such as essays, reports or newspaper articles. ThirdPerson removes the persona or author from the text and the result is the reader is not aware of the relationship or rapport between themselves and the author/persona. ThirdPerson is occasionally used, because of this apparent objectivity, to convince, debate or communicate some bias without being 'caught out'.